Western Standard - Canadians should bribe the entire Senate to retire

00:00:00.000 No matter who wins the coming federal election,

00:00:28.900 Canada's next government is going to have to deal with Justin Trudeau's Senate.

00:00:32.360 That shouldn't be a problem if Mark Carney's Liberals win,

00:00:35.060 who will find many partisan and ideological allies in Parliament's appointed upper house.

00:00:40.100 But even with a supermajority of seats in the House of Commons,

00:00:43.020 the Conservatives could find their agenda blocked by Trudeau appointees for well more than a decade.

00:00:49.660 Trudeau has appointed 93 so-called independent senators over the course of his premiership.

00:00:54.940 Of that, 85 still sit in the Senate.

00:00:58.160 Importantly, every single one of them ranges in ideological orientation from center-left to radical-left.

00:01:04.220 A few of them have shown some moderate independence from Liberal Party discipline, but most have not.

00:01:10.260 That is 85 of 105 seats directly appointed by Justin Trudeau,

00:01:15.920 in addition to several more appointed by Liberal Prime Ministers predating Stephen Harper.

00:01:20.700 To finally outnumber the Trudeau Senators,

00:01:23.000 the Conservatives would need to win every single election for many, many years to come.

00:01:28.840 Meanwhile, the cost to Canada would be parliamentary obstruction by unelected appointees,

00:01:33.660 many hundreds of billions in wasted tax dollars, and untold more in missed economic opportunities.

00:01:40.280 Much cheaper and more democratic would be to simply bribe them all to retire.

00:01:44.880 Give them however much money it will take to ease the current crop of senators

00:01:49.160 into a very wealthy, taxpayer-funded sunset.

00:01:53.000 There are a few ways that this could be done, but here's my proposal to buy them off.

00:01:58.920 To start, Senators can earn up to 75% of their salary in pensionable earnings, normally requiring roughly 25 years of service.

00:02:08.380 Some Senators will be close to this amount, but most will still be a ways off.

00:02:12.540 Some will hit the mandatory retirement age of 75 before they max out their pension.

00:02:18.680 Forget all that actuarial mumbo-jumbo.

00:02:21.900 Just give them their full pension of 75% of their salary immediately if they retire right now.

00:02:27.860 For a relatively young senator of 50 years, that would be worth $6.2 million.

00:02:33.400 But for younger senators earning an average salary of $178,000 per year,

00:02:40.440 a mere 75% of that in pension earnings might not be shiny enough.

00:02:46.540 That's why in addition to their pensions, they should also continue to be paid their full salary from the date of their retirement until their death.

00:02:55.000 For a 70-year-old senator already nearing mandatory retirement, that would be worth $2.7 million if they lived until the age of 85.

00:03:03.840 For a younger senator of 50 years, that'd be worth about $6.2 million.

00:03:08.660 dollars. But wait, there's more! To really push them over the edge and put real cold hard Canadian 0.90

00:03:16.100 cash in their hands right away, we should put something really shiny in the window that they

00:03:21.740 could have right now. Perhaps a million dollar unsigning bonus, maybe even two million, whatever

00:03:28.520 it takes. We could even pay them in American dollars if that'll help. It would be more than

00:03:34.120 worth it to taxpayers and to the democratic system. The average senator is right now is 67

00:03:40.840 years old, and if they live to 85, we have to pay them their salary and full pension for 18 years.

00:03:48.080 So that's a rough total cost to the taxpayer of $312,000 per year per senator, or $32 million

00:03:58.460 per year if the entire Senate takes the bribe. That works out to a total of $589 million if

00:04:05.620 every senator serving right now lives to the age of 85. Together with the $1 million one-time

00:04:12.640 unsigning bonus, the total cost of the Canadian taxpayer will be a grand total of $600 million.

00:04:19.600 Hell, I don't care how we do it. As expensive as it would be, the cost would be at least partially

00:04:26.940 defrayed by the pension, benefits, and salary that we already have to pay them already if we

00:04:32.520 continue with business as usual. Now some of you poor working stiffs may blush at such an extravagant

00:04:38.720 severance package. Some of you may even think that I'm being facetious. I'm not. If Canada

00:04:44.780 elects a conservative government in a month or so, it will be endlessly obstructed for many years to

00:04:49.560 come by the Trudeau senators. A conservative government will be forced to water down their

00:04:54.440 program until it is acceptable to the Liberal Senate. That will cost taxpayers many, many times

00:05:01.080 more than the $600 million it would take to bribe them all into voluntary retirement. As wretched 0.92

00:05:07.380 as the medicine may taste going down, Canadian taxpayers and the citizenry would be much better

00:05:13.000 for it. All right, well, I'm going to continue past that rant there and talk to a few senators

00:05:21.160 about this. Later on, I'm going to talk to Conservative Senator Scott Tannis. He is one

00:05:26.840 of the very few, perhaps he might be the only one left, elected, democratically elected senators

00:05:32.680 currently serving, of course, from Alberta. Alberta is the only place in Canada that holds

00:05:37.780 democratic elections for the Senate. So first up, we have Alberta Senator Paula Simons. She was 0.70

00:05:47.080 appointed by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau several years ago. So I'm pleased to bring her

00:05:53.400 into the show. She might be, I think it's, she'll call me on it if it's not fair, but I think it's

00:05:59.200 fair to say she's on the more progressive side of things. But she is one of the few who has,

00:06:04.940 from time to time, shown a bit more independence than many other members of the Senate. So welcome,

00:06:11.020 Senator Simons. Thank you for joining us. Good to see you, Derek. I have to say, I did

00:06:16.220 have the chance to listen to your little opening talk. And it's funny. I mean,

00:06:20.720 I understand why people might feel that way. But there are two things I need to say off the top.

00:06:27.200 Senators, first of all, especially this current crop of senators, tend to be all type A overachieving

00:06:33.300 workaholics. The last thing any of us wants to do is retire early with a golden diamond studded

00:06:43.180 parachute the other thing is senators generally come in two flavors there are senators who have

00:06:47.660 been hugely successful in their professional financial lives and they don't they don't need

00:06:54.060 they don't need extra money i think for some of them our senate salary is kind of like an honorarium

00:06:58.620 and then you get senators like me um who've spent our lives earning not very much money whether

00:07:03.340 we're working in the not-for-profit sector or in my case as a journalist um and we do the work for

00:07:09.580 free because we're not motivated by money. So I don't think buying us off would work. It also

00:07:15.180 won't work constitutionally. In 2014, Stephen Harper, when he was prime minister, asked the

00:07:22.440 Supreme Court specifically in a reference case what it would take to abolish the Senate. And the

00:07:28.020 answer for the Supreme Court was clear. To abolish the Senate would require the unanimous consent of

00:07:34.700 all 10 provinces, so all the provincial legislatures would have to vote in favor. The House

00:07:40.000 of Commons would have to vote in favor, and the Senate would have to vote in favor. So even if you

00:07:44.940 gave me a zillion million dollars, and even if I wanted a zillion million dollars, you can't just

00:07:50.960 put us all out to pasture. And what would I do with my time? I would have to go back to being

00:07:58.140 a reporter like you um it would uh it i mean it's a it's a it's a fun thought experiment and i will

00:08:05.480 tell you that people all across the political spectrum not just western standard audiences

00:08:09.300 but you know the democrats have believed for generations in the abolition of the senate

00:08:14.220 it's just that it's not it's it's much more easily said than done uh well i'm not actually

00:08:20.060 proposing the abolition of a senate uh i i think a federation a genuine federation needs an upper

00:08:26.260 House, although I think the structure of it needs to be radically overhauled, beginning with the

00:08:32.200 seat count. In Alberta, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, has six senators, which is barely more than

00:08:36.620 half of New Brunswick, which has a tiny, tiny fraction of the population of Alberta.

00:08:41.960 I mean, this is a problem. I mean, British Columbia has six senators and Nova Scotia has 10.

00:08:48.120 Yeah. I mean, I'm enough of an Alberta girl to agree with you absolutely that British Columbia

00:08:55.160 and Alberta in particular don't have a fair representation in the Senate, which is the

00:09:00.340 problem if you try to make it equal, if you try to make it effective and elected without making it

00:09:05.620 equal, it would actually be to the detriment of Western Canada. I strongly agree with you on that

00:09:12.620 point. So I'm actually not, perhaps I didn't say it clearly in my opening rant there. I'm not

00:09:18.880 proposing to abolish the Senate. I'm proposing to clear out voluntarily. Oh, you just want to

00:09:24.040 call us okay yeah i yeah call um voluntarily um i i don't expect every single one would take it

00:09:31.320 but i would imagine a younger senator uh i mean that's that puts a whole new career path in front

00:09:37.560 of them with a lot of money to work with i you know we actually we actually quite like the job

00:09:42.760 because because we take the job seriously we don't like the job because of the salary

00:09:47.480 we like the job because we take seriously our responsibility to hold every single piece of

00:09:53.640 of government legislation up to nonpartisan scrutiny. And I think it's really important

00:09:58.240 to say that of the current crop of senators, out of 105, only 12 belong to a partisan party.

00:10:05.120 You had mentioned earlier that you'd be speaking to my friend and colleague, Scott Tannis.

00:10:09.140 You called him a conservative senator. That's not true. Scott crossed the floor

00:10:14.100 to form his own independent Senate group, the Canadian Senators Group, which is a small C

00:10:21.500 conservative, maybe, you know, slightly red-tinged Tory group. But they are not part of the

00:10:28.940 conservative caucus. They are not whipped by the conservative leader. And Scott takes his

00:10:33.300 independence with tremendous pride. And I would say he's done as much as anyone to ensure the

00:10:39.480 reform of an independent Senate full of senators who do not walk a party line.

00:10:45.680 Okay, you are correct that the vast majority of senators no longer belong to a capital L

00:10:50.940 liberal caucus or a or a capital conservative caucus that's also extremely small but i i think

00:11:00.320 you probably wouldn't disagree with me that justin uh the prime ministers tend to appoint

00:11:06.100 senators that uh even if they're on paper independent and even if they act uh somewhat

00:11:12.460 independently i you've questioned me before a senate committee i i know you take your job

00:11:15.860 seriously. And you're not towing a partisan line, but I think you would probably agree. It's fair

00:11:21.320 to say you're on the progressive side of things. And Justin Trudeau's appointments have been

00:11:25.080 people who have some ideological affinity on the progressive side. Stephen Harper's appointments

00:11:31.220 outside of Alberta have tended to be, for the most part, ideologically conservative. In Alberta,

00:11:36.760 he's gone from the list of recommended appointees from the consultative elections that Alberta

00:11:43.420 holds. So yes, they're not like me. I'm not a partisan conservative, but ideologically,

00:11:50.060 philosophically, I'm pretty small C conservative. And I think it's fair to say that the current

00:11:54.640 Senate is very overwhelmingly on the progressive side of things.

00:11:59.680 Yeah. I mean, so the two things I want to say about that. Prime Minister Trudeau was

00:12:03.940 prime minister for almost 10 years. And as you've said, when any prime minister is in power for that

00:12:09.380 long, he or she tends to appoint people with whom they have some political affinity. And I think it

00:12:16.760 is fair to say that Prime Minister Trudeau appointed quite a few conservatives, but the

00:12:22.220 conservatives he appointed were progressive conservatives. They're not even recognizably

00:12:28.960 conservative. I might be on the very conservative side, but they're not even vaguely recognizably

00:12:35.000 conservative to most conservatives today. I think senators like David Richards and Rob Black

00:12:40.600 and Charles Adler might disagree with that. I don't know. Okay, Charles Adler was a conservative

00:12:46.520 at some point, but he had some Damascus moment. I don't think anyone in the country would consider 0.96

00:12:52.400 Charles Adler to be a conservative today. And not just in the partisan sense. I have all sorts of

00:12:57.020 issues with and had my fights with conservative politicians, but I was still always a small C

00:13:03.480 conservative. Charles Adler, no, no, no one would actually consider Charles Adler to be a

00:13:07.820 conservative today, at least among self-identified conservatives. Well, if you look at the

00:13:11.620 appointees from Alberta, Prime Minister Trudeau appointed Patty Labekin-Benson and Karen Sorensen,

00:13:19.760 both of whom were card-carrying Alberta progressive conservatives. Yeah, we both know that that party

00:13:25.280 back in its heyday included people clearly on the left as well, like Alison Redford's,

00:13:30.060 all of that. I don't want to quibble on the details of every single person, but

00:13:34.200 he's not been appointing actual conservatives. He's not been appointing people as conservative

00:13:38.900 as you. Well, no one would appoint someone as conservative as me, to be fair.

00:13:43.740 Pierre Polyev would not appoint someone as conservative as me.

00:13:46.400 So, I mean, the real question is, how can you make the Senate useful? And I think you ask a

00:13:51.100 fair question in your introduction, which is to say, if Pierre Polyev wins the election, and I

00:13:56.080 think on the day I'm talking to you, it's about a 50-50. It's certainly not the lock it appeared

00:14:02.400 to be in December. I mean, it's much more up in the air. But I think there's still an even chance

00:14:07.400 that Pierre Polyev could form the next government. And then the real legitimate question will be for

00:14:11.980 the Senate, all right, most of you were appointed by Justin Trudeau. How do you handle it if

00:14:18.180 legislation comes before you with which you are ideologically opposed? And there's an interesting

00:14:24.320 historical precedent for this. It's called the Salisbury Convention. It's what sort of binds

00:14:29.900 the British House of Lords, not to defeat legislation that comes from labor governments.

00:14:35.280 And in Canada, we have largely adopted the premise of the Salisbury Convention, which is

00:14:39.820 that if a peer poly of government is formed, and they put legislation before the Senate,

00:14:46.060 we will, for the large part, have to hold our nose and pass it. We might amend it. We might

00:14:52.660 push back. We might make speeches opposing things. But at the end of the day, we do not have the

00:14:58.280 moral or political or democratic authority to block legislation on which a conservative prime

00:15:05.960 minister, whether it's Pierre Polyev or perhaps a conservative prime minister in the future,

00:15:10.240 has campaigned. So the Salisbury Convention says if you put something in your platform

00:15:14.660 And you get a mandate to enact that platform. The unelected Senate cannot block you just because we don't like it. The question that is more complicated comes if the legislation is unconstitutional or violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

00:15:37.140 That's where I wanted to go next. One of your colleagues, I can't remember the name off the top of my head, says that the Senate should block any legislation that would include the Notwithstanding Clause. Now, whatever anyone thinks of the Notwithstanding Clause, it is a part of the Constitution. It is by definition a constitutional tool.

00:15:56.400 um that would seem to fly in the face of the salisbury convention and because the salisbury

00:16:02.300 convention is a convention and conventions are a very important part of our westminster system

00:16:07.980 but the weak part of conventions especially when we have a mixed written and unwritten

00:16:12.220 uh system like in canada is the unwritten parts the convention parts they tend to get

00:16:19.060 bent when it's convenient by by people on both sides of the aisle both sides are guilty of sin

00:16:25.460 of that. How confident are you that the Salisbury Convention would remain a solid convention,

00:16:34.620 a part of our effective constitution in this case, especially if, say, Pierre Paglia brought

00:16:39.560 forward a piece of legislation that invoked the notwithstanding clause on, say, I don't know,

00:16:44.700 mandatory minimum sentences for something in the criminal code? Yeah, preemptively, which has never

00:16:50.760 been done before. So this is where Peter Harder and I have had some interesting discussions.

00:16:54.700 I mean, Senator Harder is a huge proponent of the Salisbury Convention. He's not a fan of the

00:17:00.640 notwithstanding clause. I come from Alberta, and because I am 60 years old, in case you were

00:17:07.420 wondering. I wasn't asking, ma'am. No, but you were talking about a young senator at 50 and an

00:17:12.480 old senator at 70, and I'm right in the middle. But I remember Peter Lougheed, and I remember the

00:17:18.080 genesis of the notwithstanding clause. And so I spoke to Peter Harder's motion in the Senate,

00:17:22.460 And I said, look, I don't think we should adopt a motion that says we will absolutely vote to defeat any piece of legislation that preemptively invokes the notwithstanding clause.

00:17:32.920 Because I can imagine a scenario in which a government, conservative or liberal, might be will within its sort of practical rights to invoke the notwithstanding clause, especially if a Supreme Court decision is sort of, you know, way out of bounds.

00:17:49.620 But I think there would be some circumstances in which something was so egregious that, you know, it's one of those moments, Derek, where you and I have these funny moments where we agree because we're both libertarians at heart.

00:18:04.480 You know, I think you and I could both imagine something that a government of whatever stripe could invoke that you and I might agree the Senate should defeat that.

00:18:16.160 So I think that you keep your options open and your powder dry. I think that's the Canadian way.

00:18:24.180 So I think there's some pretty big exceptions to the Salisbury Convention. The most notable was, I think, in the very early 1990s, when the Senate, by a one vote margin, essentially on a tie, I think may have been broken by the Speaker, on replacing Canada's abortion legislation.

00:18:45.180 legislation. In 1991. And people like to say that conservative Senator Pat Carney

00:18:50.500 was the deciding vote. I mean, technically, that's not true. But I think because she was a

00:18:56.640 recently appointed conservative senator appointed by the Mulroney government, having been a Mulroney

00:18:59.980 cabinet minister, the fact that she voted to maintain freedom of choice for Canadian women

00:19:06.280 and the freedom for Canadian women to control their own bodies is an excellent example of a

00:19:11.380 libertarian use of the senate to defend our civil rights and freedoms okay but you know abortion is 0.92

00:19:17.200 largely off the political menu today but in 1991 it was hotly debated it had uh been the existing

00:19:24.140 legislation had been struck down by the supreme court and i don't want to make this a topic about

00:19:27.860 abortion this is about the salisbury convention and the application the canadian center but i

00:19:32.140 would say but it was not a matter that was decisively considered this is a fundamental

00:19:36.980 human rights a large block of canadians believe that but at a very large block also uh believe

00:19:43.880 that was a human right to protect unborn it was my point is it was a matter of dispute it was not

00:19:48.540 a matter of broad public consensus at that time that's fair and and the senate intervened on a

00:19:53.900 highly contentious political issue uh many of the votes against it actually were some of the hard

00:19:59.560 pro-life uh senators who thought the the replacement legislation was was too pro-choice

00:20:05.100 on the other side um but the issue of it aside this was not an issue where we had broad-based

00:20:11.300 social consensus at the time the senate made a very clear decision on on ideological and

00:20:17.100 partisan matter that was not clearly about uh broadly shared values around rights at that time

00:20:23.560 what's what i think is fascinating is if you look at the voting records there were conservatives who

00:20:27.260 voted in support of abortion and there were liberals i mean devout catholic liberals who

00:20:32.320 voted against it. And I think this is a really interesting test case because this is long before

00:20:37.220 Justin Trudeau amends the Senate to appoint independents, right? So this is back when the

00:20:44.140 Senate was a partisan body, liberals and conservatives, and senators still voted their

00:20:48.700 conscience and didn't necessarily vote the party line. So, I mean, that has happened exactly once

00:20:54.100 in, you know, in our lifetimes. Were you alive in 91? I was.

00:20:59.940 I'm not. I'd like to have not been. I'd like to be younger, but no, I was around.

00:21:05.540 But I think it's the exception that proves the rule. I think the fact that it has happened

00:21:10.380 exactly once shows that the Senate acts with restraint and acts with courageous prudence,

00:21:16.480 which is kind of one of our mottos, to only do these things in very rare instances.

00:21:24.940 So, I think if people are expecting a huge constitutional crisis in the wake of a potential

00:21:29.820 poly-ev election, I think they're going to be disappointed by how boring things actually turn

00:21:34.660 out to be. All that said, who knows what's going to happen because, you know, Canadian-American 1.00

00:21:40.280 relations being what they are. I was in Ottawa earlier this week, and I heard people talking

00:21:47.420 about the possibility of a national unity government. And I said, in that case, the Senate

00:21:53.780 will have to be at its most stringent. Because if we had a national unity government, then you get

00:22:02.120 a tendency to groupthink and everybody says, oh, we have to do this. It's in that case that the

00:22:07.720 senate will have to be absolutely on its guard to protect civil liberties yeah uh i there's uh

00:22:15.300 there's a saying uh uh the united states is uh bipartisanship is when both parties gang up and

00:22:20.100 screw the people uh so you have to be very careful when the parties are actually acting together it's

00:22:24.380 it's often when the parties are acting together we like them to act together sometimes but that's 0.53

00:22:28.200 actually when we have to be most on guard against uh government overreach is when there's broad

00:22:31.960 consensus among the major parties well exactly and i think you know i suspect that some of your

00:22:37.600 Western Standard viewers and readers are fans of Donald Trump, and I suspect others of them are

00:22:42.000 not, or if they were in the past, they're not so enthused now. And we can see what happens in the

00:22:47.380 United States when the Senate fails to do its job. And whatever you think about Donald Trump's

00:22:53.320 program, I think there are a lot of principled conservatives who are waiting for Republican

00:22:57.600 senators to say, okay, we agreed on this and this and this, but that is a bridge too far.

00:23:02.460 And what I hope is that whoever becomes the next prime minister, whether Mark Carney wins or Pierre Polyev wins, I am committed to holding that government to account. I am committed to taking every single piece of legislation apart, piece by piece, to ensure that we get the best governance.

00:23:21.140 And you know, Derek, because you've seen me in action in Senate committees, I don't pull my punches.

00:23:25.800 And I think I have many Senate colleagues, no matter who wins, who will understand that their job is to protect the Charter and the Constitution and the democracy of Canada.

00:23:36.460 Well, we're on very different sides of things, but I know you are a honey badger of a senator and take your jobs very, very seriously.

00:23:43.780 I think if I'm in Alberta, I should be a Wolverine.

00:23:46.360 okay senator wolverine uh that's that's apt on a few levels there i think that works um

00:23:53.100 and if you could arrange for hugh jackman to be on with me the next time that would be even better

00:23:57.420 now i'm getting your angle now i see what you're coming at okay uh shameless but uh fair enough

00:24:03.720 fair enough uh all right well i i know you take your job seriously uh i know you you would just

00:24:10.320 want to do it period but i'm gonna be there with a 600 million dollar bag when this election's

00:24:16.220 over and we'll see okay well thank you you know when i turn 75 and retire if you'd like to meet

00:24:21.660 with 600 million dollars you know in in back of the railway station i'd be cool with that too

00:24:26.860 no don't say that senator paula simons um does does her job does her job because she loves it

00:24:33.860 you know i mean this you and i have talked about this i i was a journalist we got we've already

00:24:37.880 got you on the record on the record no i was a journalist for 30 years we all know i would work

00:24:42.340 for peanuts. You know what? Yeah. In this business, I do believe you must not be in it for

00:24:50.300 the money. That's fair enough. Well, Senator, I really appreciate you being generous with your

00:24:56.380 time and your insights today. Thank you very much for joining us. Take care, Derek. All right. I'm

00:25:01.680 now going to be joined by Senator Tannis. I believe he is. He'll correct me if I'm wrong. I think he's

00:25:07.000 part of the independent senators group. He was elected as a progressive conservative. He has

00:25:13.240 the distinction of, let's bring him in now, he has the distinction of being the only elected member

00:25:18.480 of the Canadian Senate right now. There has been a tradition going back, I think, to Stan Waters

00:25:24.520 when he was elected under the Reform Party banner circa 1991-ish, and the tradition started that

00:25:32.800 at least conservative prime ministers would respect the Alberta consultative Senate elections

00:25:38.620 and then appoint the winner of those elections. And that's continued on through conservative

00:25:42.880 prime ministers with Alberta, at least. And so Scott Tannis was elected in 2012. In Alberta,

00:25:51.180 we use provincial, at least sometimes we use provincial party banners to run under. He was

00:25:56.020 elected under the progressive conservative banner in 2012, and then appointed by Prime

00:26:01.360 Minister Stephen Harper, to the Senate in 2013 with retirements.

00:26:05.340 That makes him now the lonely last democratically elected senator in Alberta.

00:26:10.840 All senators since then, including in Alberta where we've had elections since, have been

00:26:16.460 ignored by Justin Trudeau, and he's just appointed his own people.

00:26:23.260 So, Senator Tannis, thank you very much for taking time to join us today.

00:26:27.880 Glad to be here.

00:26:28.620 All right. Well, you know, before we get into my kind of cockamamie, diamond-encrusted severance package proposal for the Senate, I mean, we want to get your thoughts on, you know, how much of a challenge could the Senate be, both maybe in probability and even in more extreme cases,

00:26:57.220 Could the Senate be if in roughly a month's time, Canadians were to elect a conservative government in the House of Commons, even with a large majority, the Senate is currently now overwhelmingly liberal appointed, if not liberal in partisan name, at least liberal appointed, not ideologically left.

00:27:17.260 How obstructionist could the Senate be if there happens to be a change in governing party?

00:27:22.780 Well, I think they could be quite obstructionist if they wanted to be.

00:27:33.240 This is something that, especially over the last six months, has been on every senator's mind.

00:27:42.060 Because the wide assumption was that the conservatives would form a large majority.

00:27:49.140 And people had to think about how they were going to behave in that.

00:27:52.320 and groups such as mine. And I actually, you mentioned Independent Senators Group, which is

00:27:57.440 the largest group in the Senate. That's not my group. I, together with former Senator Doug Black

00:28:04.240 and others, started the Canadian Senators Group. We're the second largest. We have 18 members.

00:28:13.040 And we've been functioning together as a group since 2019. The point is that we've all talked

00:28:20.080 about it, the different groups. We've talked about it as leaders, including the current

00:28:25.460 leader of the opposition and Don Plett from the Conservative Party, as well as the leader

00:28:33.180 of the independent senators group and so on. I'm nervous about how this will play out,

00:28:41.460 But I think that we will get into a rhythm with it that will be acceptable to the, you know, if it were a conservative government, even one with a large majority and a sense of urgency to get things done, I think the Senate will respond appropriately.

00:29:06.320 I mean, it might take a little longer than, you know, than a similar bill would have taken, say, with, you know, with liberal government.

00:29:16.260 But I think we'll get there.

00:29:17.960 And I think most senators will use the, you know, will respect the principle of, you know, that our job is, again, I'm the only elected, but everybody else is appointed.

00:29:32.460 And everybody's pretty sensitive about that, that a government with a strong majority, a fresh majority, a fresh mandate and an agenda, that that needs to be respected and that our job in those cases is likely simply to hear out, hold the hearings, have some debates on the record.

00:29:55.840 If we see something that we think is helpful to what the government's trying to accomplish, or if we hear something in testimony that we think deserves consideration of an amendment, we put those amendments forward, we send them to the House of Commons, and they either take them or they don't.

00:30:16.720 And if they send them back not accepted, then I would expect that the Senate would very quickly then, you know, say, OK, we've done our job.

00:30:27.340 Let's pass the bill.

00:30:29.060 It's going to be, you know, you got to be a little bit of an optimist.

00:30:34.500 But I've seen I've seen most of these senators in action.

00:30:39.140 And and, you know, we've got we've got about 15 new ones over the last few months that I don't know much about.

00:30:46.720 I've met a number of them and I would count them to be, you know, to be thoughtful, responsible people that would that would kind of follow along in that in that path.

00:30:59.700 So I would say hold your idea in reserve and let's see what happens.

00:31:07.300 Well, OK, well, maybe now I'll ask you what you think of my idea.

00:31:12.760 Let's set up a hypothetical, but not a wildly hypothetical here.

00:31:16.720 I was talking, you know, with Senator Simons about, you know, when the House of Commons defeated the abortion, the replacement legislature around abortion in 1981.

00:31:26.840 Don't worry, I'm not going to ask you about abortion itself.

00:31:29.220 But that was a case where the Senate directly overrode and definitively overrode the will of the democratically elected and legitimate House of Commons.

00:31:43.400 It occurs to me now that actually it's happened more than once.

00:31:46.940 I'm not sure if it was outright defeated, but the free trade election of 1988, if my memory, if I'm getting this right, that was largely triggered because the liberal senators would not pass the free trade bill and said, well, you should have an election on this.

00:32:01.680 And to Brian Mulroney's benefit, he won that election.

00:32:04.880 but uh you know the senate has held up or outright defeated you know and they can be effectively the

00:32:12.420 same thing uh at the end of the day they have they have done this before uh it's not too often

00:32:18.240 but it has happened we discussed also you know there's a proposal among some of the leftist

00:32:23.800 members of the senate around you know should they vote against anything with the notwithstanding

00:32:27.600 clause particularly preemptive use of it again uh the notwithstanding clause is not unconstitutional

00:32:33.100 You can argue if it's a good use of it or not, but it is quite explicitly constitutional.

00:32:36.720 It's in the Constitution.

00:32:39.720 You know, so there's concern around that.

00:32:41.780 And I can certainly foresee a situation where a Polyev-led conservative government could bring forward criminal justice legislation with certain mandatory minimum sentences, etc., that the Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional, where you could see this. 0.68

00:32:54.700 So in a hypothetical situation, forget the actual content of it, but something along the lines of, say, free trade or notwithstanding clause, etc., if we have that and we ended up with logjam, you are the sole exception to the rule that they're appointed.

00:33:12.520 uh but if we have that what would be your your you know how would you receive the idea of literally

00:33:20.720 buying out the senate with uh with a severance package to essentially clear the place out

00:33:25.880 maybe not 100 but you know most of it so that new appointees could be made

00:33:30.140 uh that are more likely to pass government legislation well i think before you know before

00:33:36.860 the government uh would get to something uh that far that far out and that expansive you know

00:33:45.480 there's a few things that can be done there is there's a provision for a uh for a convention

00:33:51.160 where representatives of both the senate and the house of commons meet try and iron it out

00:33:56.740 that i don't think has ever been used but it's there in the constitution uh to be used in a case

00:34:03.420 of a deadlock so you're right there have been uh rare occasions when uh when uh for varying reasons

00:34:12.460 the senate has done this i think it's three times yeah but also the senate's never been

00:34:17.220 unless i'm wrong the senate's probably never been this lopsided with appointments not just from a

00:34:21.960 single party but a single band because because trudeau inherited all of those vacancies from

00:34:25.960 harper it's not like he's been there for just nine years it's like it's closer to like he's

00:34:31.160 been there for 15. So it's never been this lubsided. Yeah, you know, very similar to the

00:34:37.900 early days of Harper, where, you know, there were a huge number of liberals, not, not like this,

00:34:47.000 clearly not like this. I mean, the conservative caucus is down to, you know, 11 or 12.

00:34:56.040 There are still, I would say, you know, eight or 10 other reliable conservative folks that, you know, actively and openly support conservative values.

00:35:12.040 values. And then I would also say there are, you know, there's quite a number that genuinely

00:35:19.180 believe in the independent thinking, but the deference to the will of the government in a

00:35:28.620 popular mandate. So, you know, I have difficulty, I got to say, Derek, I have difficulty thinking

00:35:36.000 that we would ever, with the people that are there, get into that situation. These are not

00:35:41.620 hardcore partisan people for the most part. They are genuinely people who applied, went through

00:35:49.600 that process. I think your characterization of most of them and their ideological leanings is

00:35:56.480 true. Not everybody by any means, but it's a different group than a bunch of

00:36:06.420 of uh partisan bag men and failed candidates there are some now there are some now he got

00:36:14.200 added in the last year where i there has been a change uh a marked change where uh you know i

00:36:21.360 would say there were five or six that you could say were clear partisan people but that's not

00:36:27.660 that's not enough to move the needle yeah uh another way you're more of an expert on how

00:36:35.540 the Senate's going to, the powers of the Senate than I am here. But another way I've considered

00:36:39.960 on a potentially breaking logjam is, as far as the way I understand it, the Senate cannot defeat

00:36:44.940 a money bill. That's correct. What if? By convention, I believe. Yeah. And it's a solid

00:36:51.300 convention. Yeah, that's a pretty solid, some convention can be bent and people on both sides

00:36:56.580 will do that as I was discussing with Senator Simons, but money bills can't be defeated.

00:37:00.100 what if hypothetically uh a conservative government put like a one dollar spend in

00:37:07.280 every single bill regardless of if you know you know it could be uh you know it's it's renaming

00:37:12.780 uh some mountains somewhere you know there's some inconsequential bill but you put one dollar in it

00:37:17.820 it becomes a money bill technically how how would that then affect i think that's more likely that

00:37:24.680 That is absolutely more likely to be where we're going to run into some kind of a confrontation.

00:37:31.360 Omnibus legislation that, and this has been a trick that has been done going back to the

00:37:37.320 Mulroney years and every successive government has used it more and more where they do a

00:37:44.400 budget and then they have in the budget document an annex that says, hey, we're going to do

00:37:49.000 these things and then uh in addition and then they when they bring the the operative bill for

00:37:57.040 the budget called the budget implementation act forward it's effectively this thing that's got

00:38:02.380 the budget and all of those items in it and then it's got a whole raft of other things that have

00:38:08.020 nothing to do with budget yeah and governments including uh the trudeau government was the worst

00:38:13.120 offender of everybody in spite of what they said when they got elected that they were they would

00:38:17.720 Well, what I'm proposing is perhaps the opposite of it. Not that I expect the new Conservative government to stop using omnibus legislation. It's something, unfortunately, all the parties do. But doing the opposite. You have a standalone bill, and it's naming something Sri Lankan Commemoration Week. I don't know. It could be whatever the bill is, but adding $1 to it.

00:38:40.440 giving you the bill essentially giving the individual smaller pieces of non-omnibus

00:38:46.080 legislation you put like one dollar into it um and then it goes to the senate could the senate

00:38:52.720 then not defeat that bill if it's got you know a dollar attached to it well i don't think that's

00:38:56.780 that's what's classified as a money bill money bill is around a budget uh or a fall economic

00:39:02.700 statement those are the money bills that are talking we get bills all the time that have

00:39:06.500 dollars attached to it uh you know health bills etc daycare bills all of those bills came came

00:39:14.120 with um operative legislation and and but the the funding for that is is contained usually in a

00:39:23.500 government bill i was sorry in a budget bill so if the funding for this was a part of the bill

00:39:28.500 itself is what i'm saying like this would be a new this would be a new beast a new kind of

00:39:32.180 legislative beast I don't I don't think that would pass muster with you know with the convention

00:39:39.720 that's that exists but I think that where we we do I see a danger is in omnibus legislation where

00:39:47.780 where everything gets thrown into as Donald Trump calls it one big beautiful bill and and

00:39:55.520 And then we're kind of stuck with this, you know, things that may, you know, we may need to study.

00:40:05.100 So we'll see where that goes.

00:40:06.720 That's the one area, Derek, where I think that's the one area to watch.

00:40:10.820 And much of that will depend on how the poly of government, if they take government, how they approach the Senate.

00:40:19.920 There is a way they could provoke a fight, and that's one way to do it would be through some wicked omnibus bills that are just enormous and have everything in them.

00:40:33.960 So we'll see. I hope everybody, I think that the majority of senators are approaching this kind of concept.

00:40:42.600 I think they've accepted it. They've had six months of expecting that they're going to be in the position of dealing with conservative legislation.

00:40:52.120 I think everybody's kind of come to the idea that we need to deal in good faith.

00:40:57.500 And I would hope and expect that a poly of government, at least in the beginning, would give the Senate the opportunity to show its colors and build confidence and trust between the Senate and a new conservative government, if that's what people in Canada want.

00:41:15.800 So before I let you go, I want to touch on kind of why you're a senator.

00:41:22.040 As I said a few times, you're the only elected senator there.

00:41:26.680 And Senator Simons, I thought, made a very good point that a triple E Senate might be desirable, but a double E Senate might be more dangerous for Western provinces like Alberta, where we have elected and effective, but not equal.

00:41:42.200 where we have no, you know what, we're going to put a graphic up on the screen here showing

00:41:48.300 the seat distribution in the Senate right now. Alberta has roughly, I think, twice the population

00:41:57.200 of all four Atlantic provinces combined, yet we have just a hair over half the number of senators

00:42:03.560 as just New Brunswick, just over half the number of senators as just Nova Scotia. We have only two

00:42:10.040 more than Prince Edward Island, for God's sake. So, you know, every functioning federation in

00:42:16.760 the democratic federation, the world has some kind of upper house, you know, in America, it's,

00:42:21.780 they're all elected and have an equal number in Germany, they're appointed by the state lander

00:42:26.280 governments. And it's, they're not equal in number, but it is relative somewhat to population. And

00:42:31.800 it's a sliding scale to give more representation to the smaller states, there's different ways to

00:42:35.580 do it canada is the only one on the planet where there's no democratic legitimacy of any kind

00:42:41.660 with exceptions like yourself and where uh bigger provinces like alberta and bc can actually have

00:42:48.560 significantly less representation in that upper house than smaller uh provinces like new brunswick

00:42:54.800 nova scotia newfoundland um the the constitution appears to be set in stone for all time as long

00:43:03.420 as Quebec is a part of Canada, as long as Quebec is in Canada, it does not appear to have any chance

00:43:08.480 of being realistically opened. And, you know, Stephen Harper had referred his Senate reform

00:43:16.380 proposals, which were more modest than earlier proposals, but some modest proposals to the

00:43:20.660 Supreme Court. Supreme Court pretty much slapped him down. How do you think, you know, if say

00:43:29.200 Pierre Polyev, or hypothetically Mark Carney, I doubt he'd have an appetite for it, but either

00:43:34.080 one. How do you think Canada's next Prime Minister should approach potential Senate reform? Do you

00:43:41.340 think it should continue on the path that Justin Trudeau's put it on? Or where do you think it

00:43:47.360 should go? Well, I think your first point is absolutely correct. Trying to change fundamentally

00:43:54.780 anything that's laid out in the Constitution with respect to the Senate is impossible.

00:43:59.880 And the Supreme Court reference that Prime Minister Harper did, where he asked a series

00:44:04.800 of questions and how much provincial approvals he would need in order to make X change, Y

00:44:13.280 change, et cetera, and practically all of them of any impact would require unanimous

00:44:18.720 consent, which we're never going to get.

00:44:20.440 So I think what we have to do then is really, you know, think about, set that aside and think about how we can get the right senators in.

00:44:33.500 I mean, I've kind of come to be able to rationalize the equality around the West, Ontario, Quebec, and the Atlantic provinces.

00:44:47.020 But the Constitution doesn't recognize these so-called regions. And even then, they're asymmetrical, like Newfoundland has a different number of senators than New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island.

00:45:03.300 I mean, it seems very arbitrarily designed, almost intentionally against the West.

00:45:07.920 And that's not Justin Trudeau's fault or Stephen Harper's fault.

00:45:10.480 That's arguably the founders of Confederation, who very much viewed the West as a colony at that time.

00:45:17.880 And maybe some still do.

00:45:20.220 I just have a hard time getting around, even if we accept an appointed Senate,

00:45:24.360 I have a hard time accepting the legitimacy of the body that treats where the West is enshrined as less than equal.

00:45:33.220 Yep.

00:45:33.920 You know, I understand.

00:45:35.380 And, I mean, be California in the United States and look at Hawaii and say it's all fair.

00:45:41.160 I mean, it's not fair.

00:45:44.640 It's imperfect.

00:45:46.460 You know, the House of Lords in Great Britain, I don't even know how they get the hundreds of people that they get.

00:45:52.100 It seems to be on a whim.

00:45:53.780 It's endless.

00:45:55.080 They don't have the regional issues that we do, to be fair.

00:45:58.820 But, I mean, these upper houses all have differences.

00:46:02.500 and and to me um the one thing that that i i think we can without any constitutional change

00:46:12.340 focus on is the effectiveness of the place and and that to me is uh is important i think we can

00:46:19.460 i think the senate would benefit with a hybrid where there was a percentage of senators that

00:46:24.820 that were elected and a percentage that were appointed.

00:46:27.600 That could be something that potentially the Supreme Court reference didn't talk about,

00:46:39.120 but it would have to be prime minister by prime minister deciding to do it

00:46:44.120 as opposed to anything that codified it.

00:46:47.640 Yeah, the Supreme Court said he couldn't do it.

00:46:50.860 Yeah, the Supreme Court strangely, I think, tried to say he couldn't appoint

00:46:54.380 the elected senators from alberta but at the same time nothing you can't limit the prime minister's

00:46:59.720 prerogative about who he can appoint as long as the senators meet the criteria about land ownership

00:47:04.200 and age etc exactly there really was nothing it could do to stop him but you would still require

00:47:09.560 i think it was a convenient excuse uh and and one that um you know he was never intended to

00:47:18.840 to do if he can have a you know if he can have a consultative process like he did with these

00:47:24.360 you know provincial boards and everybody being able to apply and that's an area uh derek where

00:47:30.800 i think um if i were if i were prime minister uh pauliev coming in i would have i i would i would

00:47:38.320 open up the idea of make of having people make applications um you know the idea that you kind

00:47:45.560 of tell a few people and you play footsie and you hope that you'll get a call. I mean, the pool

00:47:51.880 of talent for that is homogenous and small. And if the idea is to get some people that can add

00:47:59.880 some value, business people, others that could still have your ideology, but, you know, aren't

00:48:07.380 wildly active politically, but could do a good job, an opportunity to apply. That I think is one

00:48:13.960 of the benefits of the Trudeau process was this application process and some vetting then to

00:48:22.040 winnow it down to something that a prime minister could look at. I don't think it was a very good

00:48:26.320 process. I think I actually applied as a joke once. And for reasons I don't understand,

00:48:33.000 Justin Trudeau did not appoint me to the Senate representing Alberta. Well, there is a little bit

00:48:39.400 of a screen i'm sure and and uh if you applied in in a polyev government you might you might get a

00:48:45.880 little further up the list actually i have a less of a chance because i think he'll appoint elected

00:48:50.440 senators in alberta so actually i think i had a better chance of becoming an alberta senator

00:48:54.040 under uh under justin trudeau although i think i was born in ontario so you know maybe polyev can

00:49:00.560 uh appoint me as a technically ontario senator and i'll just consider myself representing really

00:49:05.440 Western Ontario. There you go. Okay. Well, Senator, thank you for your time. We'll see if

00:49:12.300 I make the cut and get a Senate appointment soon and join the other media personalities who are

00:49:17.040 there. Thank you very much and wish you all the best here. Pleasure, Derek. Take care.

00:49:25.060 All right. That's it for our show today. Thank you all for joining us. Remember,

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Western Standard - March 22, 2025

Canadians should bribe the entire Senate to retire

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